To drive sales on Amazon, optimize keywords

First, you can become an Amazon vendor, a first-party wholesaler of your products to Amazon, to resell. There are marketing opportunities for this through Amazon Marketing Services.

Next is Fulfilled by Merchant, wherein you list your products on Amazon’s marketplace and you fulfill the orders. This method provides more control over your products and marketing than as an Amazon vendor, but not as many benefits as Fulfillment by Amazon, which is the third option.

Many folks offer tips on how to market on Amazon. But, in my experience, they often do not understand the platform.

In this post, I’ll review a few of the basics for success with FBA selling.

What Amazon is not

Amazon is not Google. Yes, there are similarities to Google in search. But Amazon is a selling marketplace and Google is a search engine. Philosophically, and practically, they are worlds apart.

Nonetheless, we can (and should) use our Google information on Amazon. Keywords and key phrases provide insight into consumer behavior, and, in that respect, Google is your biggest marketing ally.

The behavior of search doesn’t change because of the platform. It is important to know your keywords and Amazon gives us far more opportunities to use them.

Unfortunately, Amazon does not have a keyword tool. We have to use Google’s AdWords Keyword Planner to generate our high-traffic keywords on Amazon.

Testing keywords on Amazon

Amazon gives us clues to how valuable a keyword is. Amazon does it right in the search bar. Luckily, unlike Google, Amazon is not saving my searches. So once I begin to search, Amazon is showing me the valuable search terms. To reinforce that it isn’t saving my search history, I logged out.

My NuPeptin brand is anti-aging skin care products. I will use it as an example. Using the AdWords Keyword Planner, I know that “Anti-aging” is a popular search phrase on Google.

Once I begin to type “Anti” in Amazon’s search bar, I see the valuable search terms. When I complete the word “Anti” I see: “Anti-aging” at the top of the list with the hyphen; “Anti aging skin care kits” (no hyphen); and “Anti-aging serum.”

For those to appear before I complete the search term tells me that they are high-value keywords on Amazon.

Notice that I have “Anti Aging” in the name of the product with and without the hyphen.

And now, to compare, here’s a competitor’s product name.

SkinMedica Retinol Complex 0.5, 1 Ounce

In reality, this competitor is successful. But it’s not because of its keywords. It’s because of the competitor’s strong brand. But, on Amazon’s marketplace, a startup brand, such as NuPeptin, can overcome the larger brand by focusing on small things like the product name. I don’t currently have as many sales as my competitor. But I will in a year.

The other key areas for ranking highly in Amazon’s search results are as follows.

The bullet points under each product. Use as many as you can and make them keyword rich.

Images. Amazon allows up to 10 images. Use this opportunity to create images with text that point out features and benefits.

Product description text can be up to 2,500 characters. Use them all. Make the description keyword rich and focus on a problem and (your) solution.

Brand Registry. If you own the brand, make sure you protect it by setting it up in Amazon’s Brand Registry program.

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Phil Masiello

Phil Masiello is founder of NuPeptin, a online retailer of skin care products. He is also C.E.O. of Hound Dog Digital, a marketing agency.

Phil was previously founder and C.E.O. of: 800razors.com; Raw Beauty, Inc., which developed and marketed skin care products through ecommerce; and Metro Marketing, an agency focused on natural and organic brands. Email Phil.